Steven Crowder's Divorce Trial (9/19)
Rage at media, houses, and gag orders.
This is part 2 of our coverage of the Steven Crowder divorce trial.
The first question we’re always asked when covering this trial is, “Why cover this?”
Despite what Crowder’s lawyer, Michelle May O’Neil says, we’re not in the business of providing Hilary Crowder cover. We simply started this news coverage to provide *another voice* because, at the time, it was only Steven who had a platform to voluntarily discuss his divorce publicly.
For our previous coverage, where Steven’s lawyer falsely accused us of recording the hearing and had our phone confiscated by the court, click here:
The following will contain our notes from the trial in a relatively rough format to the best of our recollection. Because it is illegal to record court proceedings, we only use handwritten notes. The judge mentioned several times that even the court reporter struggles to properly transcribe the proceedings due to both lawyers speaking over each other.
Similar to before, there’s a lot of notes, we’re highlighting portions we deem interesting.
Court proceedings occurred in Denton County’s 16th District Court around 9am on 9/19/23. This divorce centers around Steven Crowder seeking full custody of the couple’s children. Hilary Crowder, his wife, is requesting joint custody.
Judge notes several motions have been filed relating to:
Receivership
Compelling a witness
Confidentiality agreements
Excluding evidence
Gag order
Cellphone imaging
Discovery
The judge also notes that there are two notebooks containing 21,000 documents/texts to review.
The first discussion is regarding the motions surrounding compelling witnesses and discovery.
A friend of Hilary is named as a “co-conspirator” by Steven’s lawyer.
Steven’s lawyer alleges a cabal of friends and family of Hilary are conspiring to demean Crowder and intentionally release information to the media. They also accuse Hilary of inviting the media to the hearing.
Hilary’s lawyer denies these claims.
Several people are scheduled for depositions across the country.
Editors note: This divorce seems to be getting very expensive.
The issue regarding 21,000 documents/texts is brought up. This is pretty convoluted, but essentially Crowder’s legal team did a forensic image of Hilary’s phone and, because of this, was able to access some attorney-client privileged texts/emails.
Hilary’s team is upset about Crowder having full access to the phone data without limiting any health or attorney-client privileged data. Crowder’s team insists they did not look at anything they weren’t supposed to and set that sensitive information aside.
A discussion is had, and Crowder’s team requests that a forensic image be taken of Hilary’s current phone. They want that phone image taken today.
The forensic phone image expert/private investigator is brought in. He states that he doesn’t have the ability to make a copy of her phone today.
He states that in order to image the phone, he needs to make a full copy and is unable to remove specific items or criteria. He makes the copy first, then he can provide the data minus the excluded/private information.
The judge requests that Hilary’s team submit a list of items that should be excluded from the image and that Hilary turn her phone over for a full image copy at another date.
The judge orders a “Discovery Master” to review the original 21,000 texts/data from Hilary’s first phone and then the next tens of thousands of texts from her current phone. Notes that this could take a very long time and says the Discovery Master is to be another judge and that he needs to be compensated.
Editors note: This divorce is probably crazy expensive.
The next discussion is regarding the desire for Steven to sell the vacation home. The judge previously ruled that the vacation home NOT be sold.
Steven’s team notes that the home is owned by a trust.
This trust consists of Steven Crowder, Hilary Crowder, and Louder With Crowder CEO Gerald Morgan.
Hilary’s team claims that the trust has already taken action to start the sale of the home and has a realtor agreement.
Crowder’s team alleges that someone has been using the home when both Hilary and Steven have not been there.
Hilary’s team does not deny this.
Hilary’s team notes that in the 2 years since the house has been shared between Hilary and Steven, that Steven has never visited the house. The judge essentially says that point is irrelevant and rules that nobody can use the house except if one of the parties is present.
Hilary’s team asks the judge to order Steven not to sell the house. Steven’s team states that the trust isn’t part of the suit, and Steven and Gerald Morgan are in their right to act as trustees.
The judge denies the motion to sell the home “to the extent” she can.
The final, and most important discussion, was over the gag order previously put in place to prevent both parties from discussing the divorce.
Steven’s team wants the gag order lifted. Steven’s lawyer calls out Current Revolt, and Tony Ortiz, multiple times, as well as points to us, stating that we have published and admitted we are taking Hilary’s side.
Editors note: We aren’t taking sides. It just so happens that Steven looks horrible in these proceedings and continues to make himself look bad with his very public statements and dating contests.
Hilary’s team alleges that Steven was involved in leaking a Dropbox link containing court documents on a website and that Louder With Crowder CEO Gerald Morgan had employees tweet out the links.
Steven’s team says there is no link to Steven and the Dropbox leak and that the jury pool for the future jury trial is being tainted by the media.
Hilary’s team reminds the judge that it was Steven who chose to make his divorce public and cites a YouTube video that has 407,000 views where Steven violates the gag order. That hour-long video can be viewed here:
Steven discusses the divorce in a video, announces a “Win a Date with Steven Crowder!” sweepstakes. He states tasteful erotica “is tolerated.” Editors note: The children have to one day view the video of their father propositioning random women on the internet to send “tasteful erotica” to their father during divorce proceedings with their mother.
Steven’s lawyer provides a copy of the first Current Revolt article where we covered the divorce hearing to the judge, seemingly alleging that we are part of a planned scheme with the Hilary family. Steven’s lawyer states they want the gag order lifted because Steven should be allowed a “media strategy” and that Current Revolt is tainting the jury pool with the news articles.
Hilary’s lawyer notates that the Current Revolt article only had 10 likes and 1 comment (editors note: ouch!), hardly worth being concerned about, especially compared to Crowder’s recent video broadcasted to his 5.81 million subscribers and viewed 407,000 times.
Editors note: For the record, the original Crowder article is relatively on par with the average viewership of our popular articles and only received 18,000 views. Hardly able to compete with Steven Crowder’s 407,000 views. We appreciate Steven’s lawyer thinking we are much bigger than we actually are.
Our metrics for the original Crowder article. 18,000 views. Editors note: Steven is complaining about some alleged coordinated media strategy. We wonder where all of Steven’s media friends are. He’s been in the media business much longer than us and is presumably much more connected than we are. Where are all of Steven’s media friends to defend him?
The judge ordered that the gag order stand.
The judge said she plans to deal with the gag order violation by Steven when he is next in court.
A jury trial date was set for next year.
That’s it for our coverage. The judge ordered mediation. We sincerely hope and pray that both parties can resolve their differences and arguments in mediation and hopefully move past this for the sake of the children. The only ones seemingly winning here are the lawyers and their bank accounts.
UPDATE: We’ll note that a media person did come out to defend Steven. Manosphere provocateur and amateur journalist (?) Pearl Davis.
Pearl published a video where she streamed the “leaked” Dropbox documents as well as video testimony of the Nanny who was employed by the Crowder family. Pearl ended up revealing the names of both the children and the Nanny’s home address when she failed to bleep out the private information during the Nanny’s testimony.
Pearl did not state who her source was for the “leaked” testimony and court documents but denied that it was Steven or his legal team.
Pearl is well-known on the internet for saying incredibly bombastic and stupid things in order to garner attention. She once published a video of herself singing a song about Jewish people and Hitler.
When Ortiz called out Pearl for doxxing the Crowder children and the Nanny she proceeded to block him.
Womp womp.
Allegedly there was a citizen leaving the courtroom shaking his head and loudly exclaiming "That one lady attorney, she's an angry elf."
Steven keeps digging his hole that the lawyers can’t keep a handle on. This keeping getting worse and worse. Poor Hillary. I’m sure all she wants is this to be simple and easy so she can go on living her life and taking care of those kids.